The perils of voting in the modern age.

Inside the bleak world of Joe Francis, the man behind the “Girls Gone Wild” franchise.

With the 428th pick in the 1974 NFL draft, the Green Bay Packers selected…one of the most violent killers in U.S. history.

A religious order funded largely by the founder of the Cheesecake Factory announced plans to build a temple in a small California town. The town wasn’t thrilled.

“Think about that: Kim has so thoroughly monetized the very act of living that the money she earns from being filmed going about her life constitutes a relatively small sum compared with the one she generates from allowing people to see pictures and cartoon drawings of the life she has already filmed. She has figured out how to spin the mundanity of being herself—something billions of people do every day for free—into a more lucrative business than being the most famous rapper in the world.”

"What’s it like to be giving birth at home, and see blood pooling between your legs, and look up at the ashen faces of a birth attendant, a midwife, a spouse? What’s it like to feel the earth tremble and see the roof and walls of your home or school fall towards you? More to the point, in terms of survival: what happens next? It depends. Not just on the severity of the injury, but on who and where you are."

The rise and fall of the new oligarchs, who raided the Russian state. When Putin came to power most fled, but not Mikhail Khodorkovsky: “The other oligarchs, when they saw the fuzz, knew they should run. But Khodorkovsky forgot.”

“I hate classical music: not the thing but the name. It traps a tenaciously living art in a theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today.”

What happened when the founder of North Face and Esprit bought a chunk of Chile the size of a small state, intending to live with a select group inside it and turn it case study for ecological preservation. It turned out, however, that Chileans didn’t really like that idea.

On the hanging of James Murphy, murderer.

On the sudden death of an up-and-coming rapper.

Life on the other side of the laptop.

The harrowing first ascent of the mountain’s West Ridge.

The bizarre battle over the Call of Duty video game franchise.

What remains of the past’s cutting edge.

The author, who died last week, tells the story of his guns.

On the slaughter of songbirds migrating across the Mediterranean.

The legacy of the Scopes trial on one Tennesse town.

The costs of a life spent reporting on spies.

Behind the scenes with the creator of Black-ish.

The story of Aiden Sinclair, the “grifter magician.”

The troubling final years of Mickey Rooney’s life.

On the profound power of the placebo.

A conversation on the Times Square of the ’50s and ’60s.

The perspective-bending art of identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes.